Every year, millions of dollars are lost in productivity and assets due to emergencies. Emergencies may even cause loss of life. In many instances, businesses and organizations can prevent at least some of the losses associated with emergencies by planning for emergencies in advance. To better prepare for an emergency by timely identifying warning signs of potential emergency and evaluating their legitimacy, and responding in the most efficient manner, an organization may use procedures for recognizing potential threats and implement rules and procedures to follow once an emergency occurs.
In the event a disaster strikes, participation and involvement of a wide range of different agencies and organization, both government and private, may become necessary. Human and technical resources of many agencies and organizations may be needed to respond to an emergency. Each organization may follow its own rules and procedures without knowledge of steps and measures taken by other organizations involved. As a result, each organization may waste time and resources by responding to a disaster, collecting and recording facts, and analyzing information related to a disaster when other agencies or entities are doing the same operations. For example, several different entities may be conducting testing, planning remedial measures, and collecting information and evidence.
Typically, significant amount of collected information may remain within an individual organization that originally collected the information. Only limited information may be shared between agencies and organizations due to lack of centralized network where all the information may be forwarded for sharing. Because information is scattered among numerous agencies and organizations, communication, collaboration, and coordination among these entities may require significant expenditure of resources
It is accordingly a primary object of the invention to provide a centralized and automated information management system capable of tracking, monitoring, collecting, notifying, distributing, recording, and storing all the information related to emergency events, their mitigation and the possible aftermath.
This is achieved by providing a wireless system that disseminates information concerning emergency events and efforts to mitigate their effect. Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by means of the elements and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.